O magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
(Psalm 34:3-4, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
Thanks to my Roman Catholic upbringing, I heard a great deal more about the Virgin Mary than Protestant children do—or so I’ve been told, anyway. And then I wound up attending the University of Notre Dame, where I heard even more, and not just because of the school’s association with “Our Lady.” I’d arrived, you see, in the middle of an intense debate about whether the Blessed Virgin had been appearing to a group of teenagers in a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina (still, then, part of communist Yugoslavia) for the last half-decade.
Back then, I considered the stories coming out of Medjugorje unlikely. I had a head full of science and rationalism, and little use for miracles or apparitions. Then again, I’d spent the summer before heading off to college watching Joseph Campbell on PBS, so some part of me also delighted in the mythopoetic symbolism of retreating to a campus dedicated to the virgin mother to reinvent myself into adulthood. But I didn’t consider that symbolism “real,” you understand—just a nifty cultural coincidence.
I certainly didn’t believe the Virgin Mary had anything resembling a direct interest in my spiritual development, or the condition of my soul, or however one might frame it.
These days… well, these days, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible.
I imagine some Friends reading that and thinking, “No, wait, George Fox did not say that Mary had come to teach us herself!” But I also imagine some other Friends observing that, from the time of Fox onwards, Quakers have always believed that women have the same capacity to deliver messages from Spirit as men. So I can’t see any reason that Mary could not, if God so desired, come as a representative of Spirit and speak to my condition as easily as her son.
She hasn’t so far—at least not directly, not in the moments of revelation I’ve experienced. If she was working behind the scenes on Spirit’s behalf in those moments, I don’t suppose I would have any way of knowing.
I do know, however, that I’ve taken inspiration from the pattern and example Mary established with her faithfulness, especially her willingness to “magnify the Lord,” to consistently recognize and affirm God’s presence at the center of her life. She doesn’t do that just because “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” as she tells her cousin, Elizabeth.
Mary appreciates what God has done for her personally, of course, but she also celebrates God’s generosity to the rest of humanity. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” she explains to Elizabeth. “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”
I have to admit, as much as I like the broad mandate of Micah’s “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God,” I prefer the specificity and the revolutionary zeal of Mary’s message. I know many Quakers whose passion for peace and social action comes from the same holy enthusiasm that animated Mary as she set out on the path God had chosen for her.
Luke’s Gospel doesn’t tell us anything about how Mary’s spiritual life before Gabriel informed her that she would give birth to Jesus. We do know that she had already found favor with God, because Gabriel says so. And we know Mary’s response to Gabriel’s announcement: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
It seems reasonable to assume, then, that at some level Mary had “sought the Lord” well before Gabriel showed up—that, to paraphrase the early Quaker Isaac Penington, she had set aside her own ambitions and worldly desires so she could “sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart.” (I think we can believe this much about her no matter what we think about the Immaculate Conception.)
She could not have imagined how God would answer her—thus, her single question to Gabriel, “How can this be?” You or I might ask the same thing if we learned what God had planned for us. But could we accept Gabriel’s answer (“nothing will be impossible with God”) as unhesitatingly as Mary did? Or would we continue to cling to our fears?
If you don’t already know what you’d do in that situation, you may well find out some day. Should the moment come, perhaps the example of Mary’s faith can shed light on your own condition.
I rarely think about Mary although I prayed to her often as a Catholic girl. When I do, it’s about her life after the crucifixion and resurrection. I can easily see her sharing food and building community wherever she settled, be it the south of France, with Mary Magdalene, or in the Middle East. A woman who had lived through what she had experienced would be a generous soul.
Thank you for reminding me of this saint whom I keep in my pantheon.
Which reminds me, having come up with Catholic, I have a pantheon of prophets, saints and avatars on whom to call in any type of need. I like that better than having one Almighty Personage who is supposed to solve everything at my request, if it be his will.
And now I will retreat into my home and entreat the patron saint of housekeeping as I embark on straightening and clearing surfaces in preparation for guests.
Thanks for this, Ron. In spite of my solidly Protestant background, every time I read the magnificat I am deeply stirred and love the revolutionary message. More than once, I have been moved to read it (with voice wobbling) during Meeting for Worship around the time of Advent. I also love Mary’s response to Gabriel when he reveals to her that she will bear the Christ child, particularly the King James Version: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” I believe that in the Catholic tradition the embrace of Mary recognizes the feminine in God which is sorely lacking in Protestantism. That the powerful and revolutionary voices of women are raised up on numerous occasions in both the Old and New Testaments by those writing in highly patriarchal cultures, tells you something about the extraordinary nature of the Scriptures. When we drop our own culturally imposed blinkers and prejudices, we are able to engage in the Bible in a whole new way — which is how George Fox and the early Quakers did it.
Catholics did us a favor by noticing that there might be divinity in the female side of the species when other Christians were still oblivious of the fact. I think we, Quakers, can go one better now. Jackie Leach Scully’s pamphlet “Playing in the Presence” displays the Sistine chapel painting of God reaching toward Adam…but cradled in his arm notably even at his same “level” is a woman. The woman personifies Wisdom in the Old Testament, Apochrypha and books of John and James. We Quakers might do well to bring her down off the ceiling and, well, speak of Mary+Sophia in the same terms as we do their male counterparts. Might be a bit more palatable for our non-theistic co-religionists in that studied reason not sheeply belief that is demanded of us.
Mary has been a solid friend, comforter, guide, and loving mother throughout my life. I have no doubt that she is a living dynamic presence who has always helped me say “let it be” when I have resisted with “how can this be?” Thirty-two years ago, she helped get me through chemotherapy and radiation when the doctors where doubtful. She mentored and eldered me to nurture the Light within my young children, as she had with Jesus. She guided me into nursing school when I was 55, and then validated my inclination to be in palliative care. She accompanied me as I tended dying patients and several F/friends. She knows the ministry of listening and accompanying others, and has always held me in the Light.